Wotcher, muffins

I have had my eye on this recipe for English muffins for quite a while. I've been cast-iron skillet-less for a while though, so I never attempted it. But since I got a skillet for my birthday (thanks, Mom) I finally have all the requisite tools. Now, the temptation to do this post with an English accent or a British theme is nearly irresistible. However, accents don't work as well written out. (Or perhaps they do, at the very least, better than my English accent...) How do people come up with gimmicks for every blog post? I'll just assume that making English muffins from scratch is novelty enough. My del.icio.us shows that I bookmarked this recipe back in April 2005. Back then, I was still in Chicago (*sniff*) about to graduate from college. I can't remember if my thesis was due before or after then, which probably says something about my thesis. Which, actually, brings us to our first picture. This is the milk, shortening, sugar and salt cooling down. Blobs of oil can be seen on the liquid-air interface, which was (more or less, in an excruciating paraphrase) what my thesis was on. Mmm, appetizing.
Possibly even more appetizing is the yeast proofing, shown here for your enjoyment. Sorry. I took the picture, so I'm obligated to share. This picture has nothing to do with my thesis.
Here are before and after rising pictures, as I'm always amazed at how bread actually rises. My apartment is incredibly humid and warm, making for ideal rising conditions, even if it meant I was about to pass out while kneading.

The following picture does not do justice to the kneading/post-kneading situation of the kitchen (and myself) covered everywhere with flour.
Judging by the blurriness of this picture, this is showing cut-out fetal English muffins trying to escape. Their lack of legs prevents this from being a viable option for them, they all ended up staying on the cutting board. I had to re-roll the dough once, which didn't seem to make any difference during the second rise. They were cut with the mouth of a large mug, the nicer looking once being the second go round after I realized I really had to slam that mug down. This is half the dough, and easily made 9 muffins and a baby muffin. (I already called them fetal, so baby doesn't really make sense. So by baby I actually mean runt.)After a second rise, here they are being born. I mean cooked. Same difference. The original recipe is infuriatingly vague ("They're done when they look done."), but...I can't really help. It was very play-by-ear, especially as I kept on adjusting the flame. Cutting one in half was an easy enough test, and I could then eat it immediately. Here're the finished muffins (minus the two I ate while they were cooking.) They look sort of like pancakes, but they're much thicker, with a more cake-y (dare I say, muffin-y) texture. Ah, this reminds me I once knew of a girl at my school who was in 2nd or 3rd grade, about 6 grades below me, whose name was Muffin. This strikes me as meaning she either has very, very cruel parents, or parents with no forethought and little idea that their child might grow up some day. I'm sure she's, uh, fine now. I'm also assuming this little anecdote is un-Googleable.
With my terrible cameraphone, one might think by this photo that I am presenting a store-bought English muffin! (Except for that fact that that would be incredibly boring.)
As the recipe noted, one half of the dough can be made into a loaf of bread. I gently rolled it out after the first rising, then rolled it up into a log for the second rising. Although it looks very promising, I actually don't know how it tastes, because I ate way too many muffins and am mildly over-full. It's now in the freezer, waiting patiently for me.